What is a data management plan?

The data management plan is a document written at the start of a research project, regularly updated afterwhile, which describes the data produced during the project and the way they will be managed. In other terms, it’s a questionnaire:

• What are the data, how are they produced?
• How are they documented?
• How are they stored, backed-up?
• How is the regulation taken into account? (GDPR, intellectual property…)
• How will they be shared?
• Who will be responsible for them?

Here is the full set of questions for the ANR template (one of many other templates).

What is it used for?

Before being written, the data management plan helps you to ask yourself the questions that need to be anticipated early on the project.

After being written, it helps you both disseminate the data, and limit data sharing to what is allowed regarding intellectual property rights, industrial issues or private data.

It should be designed so that project’s members can refer to it each time they need an answer about the data they produce, eg.: can I share it, who’s deciding, what do I need to check, how should I share it…

Have you ever used a data management plan that was written by someone else? We would love to hear from you!

Who’s requiring it and when is it required?

Are you the winner of a call for project funded by Europe or the Agence Nationale de la Recherche? Congratulations :-) The funding comes with the obligation to write a data management plan 6 months after project kick off, updated after 24 months and at the end of the project. It is a prerequisite to the last financial installment.

Who should write it?

That should be the project coordinator. Project partners and librarians can be called for help.

How can we write it?

Glad you are convinced! (or mandated…). Please bring with you:

1. Your librarian: for it’s invaluable help.
2. Your answer to the call for projects, the funding agreement, and the consortium agreement (if there is one). We will look for two pieces of information:
   • deliverables, results, work packages mentions>
   • intellectual property sharing statements between partners
     → Please send us these documents, we are used to them!
3. Your project partners: they will help us match deliverable statements and the data that will be produced by the teams .
4. A template on DMP OPIDoR. This is the questionnaire. We start by defining a few “research products”, meaning the data that will be produced, based on the work packages and deliverables that were determined above. Then for each research product, every question of the template is answered.

DMP OPIDoR enables collaborative work and sharing of the plan.

Can we get an example?

Of course!